Scientists from Chinaconducted a review on CRISPRtechnology and
applications on oil crops to determine its prospects in the agricultural
and food industry. They are optimistic that genome editingin oil crops
would flourish in the near future.

The review was conducted to provide references for the better use of
CRISPR to modify oil crops for higher yield, citing both the potentials
and challenges that the scientists identified. Using trends from other
genome-edited crops like rice and tomatoes, the review revealed that
distinct CRISPR-Cas9 variants that show altered or relaxed protospacer
adjacent motif (PAM) profiles will be harnessed in base and prime
editors to enhance the oil crop genome editing function. The advances of
the CRISPR technology can also contribute to the construction of a
genome-wide mutant library for different oil crops, and the accelerated
domestication of a vast majority of wild novel oil crops to address the
global crop oil demand. The paper also mentioned the double haploid
inducer-mediated genome editing system was successfully used to directly
modify multiplegene homoeologs in rapeseed. On the other hand, the
review also noted the challenge caused by complicated genomes and
recalcitrance to transformation, such as obtaining the CRISPR-based
knockout lines in sesame, sunflower, and groundnut. Thus, the
researchers recommended that novel genetic element delivery systems for
these crops need to be developed in the future.

The scientists concluded that genome-edited oil crop research still has
a long way to go, but its regulatory constraints are predicted to be
gradually removed in the future.

CRISPR-based genome editing technology and its applications in oil crops
- ScienceDirect
[www.sciencedirect.com]